Search This Blog

Welcome to my reflecting corner for God's word and theology and any other funny stuff. I pray that, by the grace of God, through reading my blog, you will be touched by Him in understanding Jesus Christ more in your life.

What defines a NUS Hope Christian - the debates continue

I saw just now the lively debate and discussion that has been going in the NUS Hope community forum in the IVLE. Just thought that while I post my response up in the IVLE, I might also as well post it up here. Here goes:

I really feel sad when I see people 'suffering' or so-called 'not enjoying' their studies. I personally dun have anything against these group of people, but I just feel sad. I was always thinking, how am I going to distinguish myself, my identity as a NUS Hope Christian from the other people, non-believer especially. I have been called 'nuts' multiple times by people in and around the church and outside of the church (they dun literally mean nuts of course but you can see their disbelief) when I commented that the IVLE forums and the classrooms have became my playground and by that, I hope you all realise that I actually mean that I enjoy my modules a lot and I have a hell lota fun out of the discussions. For me, my task is clear, I am enjoying my modules and I want people to know it, to realise that they can enjoy their modules also, and their studies as well.

I understand that I'm speaking from a position where I'm doing the things I like in NUS, mainly studying history and techno management and literally, all of my UEs and breadths will be used to take my techno management modules which I dun intend to S/U and after a bit of calculation, I figured that I have exactly 3 UEs left for me to take any modules and S/U them. As such, I'm in a position to 'enjoy' my modules. I often wondered how am I going to identify with those who may not have enjoyed these privileges. My end conclusion is that I dun have to identify with them. In the end, I want to bring light to them, to show them that there is no need to lament so much about their studies. This is one lesson which I learnt from outreaching to people. I may not be good at it, but I can learn to enjoy the process. I may not like the modules but I can learn to enjoy the modules.

Take for example, my management module's a bit boring now but I learnt to enjoy the module through my group project as I bonded together with my project groupmates and we have fun together. Likewise, sometimes I do feel that I have difficulties understanding technological innovation but my fun-to-be-with group mates helped me to learn to enjoy the module. The bottomline: I'm not out to tell everyone who dun enjoy what they are studying off, nor am I here to degrade these people, but I want to show and demonstrate that we can learn to enjoy these modules and do the best we can. As Hope Christians who happen to be studying in NUS, we ought to demonstrate these traits, rather than lamenting with our coursemates or friends, complaining that school sucks. We need to bear in mind that we will be studying here for 3-4 years, so if we dun learn to enjoy our studies and set an example of salt and light to our fellow course mate, then tell me, what makes us NUS Hope Christian?

The real bottom bottom line therefore is about us bring hope to our fellow NUS students not only in life but also in their studies. My experience and what I have seen around have taught me that while there is no strong co-relationship between scoring well and module satisfaction, able to achieve satisfaction from our module and studies does help a lot. It's not about scoring well, it's not about being a good student, it's more about being in a position to motivate our fellow NUS students, to act as the source of light and hope for them. And therefore, in order to achieve, we can't possibly join them in their lamenting or whatsoever. It's also not about putting on a fake front. I can also put on a fake front if I want, but what I'm talking about is real joy that derives itself from the joy of salvation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Once there was this man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thorns, and the thorns spring up and choked him. And as he went on, he didn’t have money, and he met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave him 1,000 talents of gold and 100 changes of raiment. And he got into a chariot and drove furiously, and when he was driving under a big juniper tree, his hair caught on a limb of that tree, and he
hung there many days, and the ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink, and he ate 5,000 loaves of bread and two fishes.

One night when he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped, and fell on stony ground. But he got up and went on, and it began to rain, and it rained forty days and forty nights, and he hid himself in a cave, and he lived on locust and wild honey.

Then he went on ‘til he met a servant who said, “Come, take supper at my house.” And he made an excuse and said, “No, I won’t. I have married a wife, and I can’…

The fourth gospel in our New Testament is indeed an interesting piece of document for Christ followers to study. The past one week plus has been a journey reflecting on the gospel and asking ourselves some questions regarding familiar aspects of the gospel that we have never thought of before. There are at least three reflection points that I would like to share here.

1. Jesus as Logos: What is God's revelation really?

In the fourth gospel, the Word (greek: Logos) is being introduced as being with God and having the divine quality of God (1:1). In fact, when I first learned of Jesus' identification as Logos years ago, a question came to my mind - why then are "rhema" words so special? My own study into logos and rhema was documented in here. The outcome of my study inspired a rage back then, knowing that many people have artificially created a divide in the word of God.

But my recent foray into the study of Logos yielded more insights. I came back to this insight many…

Recently I was taking another course on the book of James. Similar to Romans, this is also a book that I have co-taught in church and studied in Eagles Rendezvous. Revisiting this book again yielded three reflection points.

1. The disciple's identification
The epistle by James is an interesting book within the New Testament to study. In my own NT study, I have also been fascinated by how economical the NT authors when it comes to their words - that they do not waste words in their letters. This manifests itself right from the beginning when the NT authors introduce themselves.

Many of us will sometimes skip over the introduction, but we can learn a lot about the epistle itself as well as its application to our Christian life through the introduction. In James, for example, James introduced himself as a slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ (James 1:1). The original Greek reveals much more, placing the the possession genitive (of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ) before the word &…